Angelo Madrigal heard a lot of noise coming from his hallway around 9:30 on Thursday night.
“It was a bit chaotic in the hallways,” said Madrigal, a resident adviser at St. Peter’s University. “A lot of people were just happy. I don’t blame them at all.”
The happiness was the result of the men’s basketball team’s shocking 85-79 overtime victory over national powerhouse Kentucky in the first round of the men’s NCAA Tournament. The Peacocks were the No. 15 seed in the East Regional bracket, while Kentucky was the No. 2 seed and considered a favorite to win the entire tournament.
There was plenty of Peacock pride across Jersey City on Friday morning. The campus was relatively quiet along Kennedy Boulevard, but plenty of students were seen walking to class in their school colors, and wearing big smiles on their faces.
“To see them, people you have class with, it’s amazing,” said Ryan Pernell, a junior majoring in criminal justice. “You see them work hard every day and I can’t ask for anything else.”
The small New Jersey school didn’t just pull off an upset – it took down an eight-time national champion in the process. Kentucky is the winningest men’s basketball program in NCAA history with 2,327 victories, including 131 wins in the NCAA Tournament.
It was the first NCAA Tournament win in school history for the private Jesuit school with just more than 3,000 students enrolled
The Peacocks won the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference championship last week to earn an automatic bid into the tournament for the fourth time in school history and first time since 2011. Thursday’s win marked just the 10th time a No. 15 seed won a first-round game since the current format was introduced in 1985.
Kasidy Slusser and Dakota Pitts, freshmen on the St. Peter’s softball team, were excited to see the school gain attention.
Story from Biogen
Hope for treating spinal muscular atrophy
See More →
“It honestly means a lot,” said Slusser, a health and physical education major. “Whenever we would tell someone that we went to St. Peter’s, they’d say ‘Where is that?’, but now I feel like we are finally on the map and here we are.”
Students packed into Mac Mahon Student Center for a viewing party Thursday night, and a video of students dancing and being excited after the win went viral on social media.
“Last night, people were running up and down the streets and people were honking their horns,” said Pitts, a biochemistry major.
The excitement will return to Jersey City on Saturday night, when St. Peter’s takes on No. 7 seed Murray State in the second round. Neither school has ever won multiple games in one NCAA Tournament.
With another win, St. Peter’s would head to the East Regional semifinals – commonly called the “Sweet 16” – next weekend in Philadelphia, a little bit closer to home than Indianapolis, where this week’s games are being played.
Only two No. 15 seeds – Florida Gulf Coast in 2013 and Oral Roberts last year – have ever reached the Sweet 16.
“I feel like we’re going to make it next round,” Pernell said. “I don’t want to jinx anything, but I just feel something different. It’s a different atmosphere this year, so I have high hopes.”